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Sunday, November 29, 2015

Why is it so much more irritating and itchy when a mosquito bites you on your foot compared to other parts of your body?

You can’t scratch it as hard and when you do you get scum under your fingernails and it tickles so you’re actually torturing yourself whilst relieving yourself. I don’t like it.

Only a few things put me in a vicious mood, for example, when I’m all dressed up and my hair blows into my lipstick, or when I spill the sugar container all over the floor and no matter how thoroughly I clean it up I can still feel it underfoot and mostly, when mosquitoes bite me on the fudging foot.

There are a lot of mozzies around because of the muggy conditions here in the dry tropics. When I say ‘dry tropics,’ I mean ‘oppressive, desert-like, apocalyptic, hell hole’.

Today, our bloody internet went down and our pool turned green which meant no swims for us and no entertainment, just sweltering in the 35 degree heat and watching the boring telly.

Why do broadcasters think all day golf is even remotely interesting television viewing?

I switched over to ‘Border Patrol’, (the most xenophobic, bogan show ever) and wondered why people who get caught by the federal police don’t watch the show to get tips on how to smuggle more effectively? The old lining on the suitcase thing is getting a bit tired and I’m sure the Feds would appreciate more of a challenge. What ARE they teaching kids in schools these days?

My top tips for smuggling would be:

1. Sweating is a dead giveaway. Don’t sweat.

2. Don’t stuff things up your botty or swallow things because it can explode inside you and make you sweat quite profusely alerting the authorities to some sort of mischief afoot.

3. A bunch of bananas and a bag of grapes are NOT worth a $300 fine. You can buy bananas and grapes in most countries, so why?

4. If your hands are shaking and your eyes are darting around the place, you’ll be detained for an internal examination. Try to act natural or they’ll find those bananas before you can say ‘Yes, I have no bananas in my toiletries bag.’

5. Don’t have neck tattoos because it makes you look highly suspicious. People who have neck tattoos are obviously tough, impervious to pain and wouldn’t flinch at swallowing thirty condoms full of cocaine. Plus they’re probably the type of person silly enough to do it. (No offence to anyone with a neck tattoo. Really. I think they look lovely.)

6. Smuggling drugs in lava lamps is a recognisable ploy because lava lamps went out in the eighties. So did oversized wigs.

7. Ignorance is no excuse for the law so when you fail to declare the raw fish and exotic bean sprouts in your luggage, cocking your head to one side in a fetching manner and saying, “Que?” will fail to get you out of a fine.

If I was going to smuggle anything into the country, I’d dress as an unnaturally fat nun. But I wouldn’t hide things under my voluminous habit. Oh no. I’d have Scotto dressed as an old aged, crippled, visually challenged person and I’d have all the contraband stuffed inside his artificial leg. They’d check under my habit then be so embarrassed when I came up clean, they wouldn’t dare to touch poor, blind Scotto.

Now back to those mosquitoes. Why does the foot hurt so much compared to the other bits?

Friday, November 27, 2015

I’m fifty-five. Yeah, I know, I don’t look it or act it… but I freakin am. Jaysus!

(I totally look it.) Fifty-five is almost fudging SIXTY.

So what happens to women as far as sex goes when they get past fifty? It’s an interesting question because ,let’s face it, we aren’t all Olivia Newton John.

(She’s my role model and I reckon she goes for it like a fudging rabbit.)

Well… this is my take anyway…

1. You’ll probably get a whole lot of extra urinary tract infections because the distance between your who’syourfather and your boombalishus becomes a lot fudging closer due to the thinning of certain infuriating soft tissues. Urinary tract infections are moderately tolerable if you're having sex in multiple positions in various dangerous locations, thirty-five times a day.

But if you have a normal bonk once a week and you still get them... then it's a travesty.

2. Even though you’ve finally realised what pops your cork at the age of whatever, it doesn’t matter because you’ve lost the taste a bit because of other temptations such as; sleep ins, clean, unsullied sheets, and over-indulged dogs who refuse to get off the bed.

3. Sometimes it can hurt because of the friction and the thinning of the before-mentioned, infuriating soft tissues. You can grit your teeth and bear it but… God, really?

4. You’ll feel uninspired and unsexy because when you look down at the boobs which fed five ravenous babies, they’re now dangling like a pair of golf balls in football socks (the boobs not the babies) and your stomach fold is encompassing your caesarean scar. If you don’t feel sexy in yourself, then honestly... it’s all gone to hell in a washing basket.

5. The thought of the extra energy needed to get yourself in the mood and the exercise required during the ‘act’, doesn’t quite balance up with the pitiful amount of calories which will probably be burnt. Seriously? All that effort has got to have some benefit or why bother?

6. Imaginative positions such as ‘the wheelbarrow’ or the 'reverse cowboy' are completely ruled out due to back, knee, ankle, groin and jaw strains.

I could go on but I fear I may be over-sharing, and I'd hate to do that. All I can say is, enjoy it while you can and that if you don’t use it you lose it.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Remember how my husband, Scotto, left town to start a new job and I wasn’t going to see him again until we sold the house?

Well, we haven’t sold the house... despite dropping the price by fifty grand as a red spot special. And it was unfeasible financially for the husband to stay away… or for me to move down what with all the dogs, so... he’s back.

Sans job.

I too, will be sans job until 2017. Fortunately, we both have a combined 9 months long service leave between us, so we’ll be okay.

But the thing is, while he was away for the last month, I thought I’d surprise him with a modelesque physique when I next saw him. I thought I’d have him dribbling in lust at my Kate Moss body after weeks of self-imposed starvation and physical torture when he next saw me.

I’ve been living on 800 calories a day and power walking for an hour a day at 5am before work.

Every damn day.

In the meantime, he’s been skyping me as his cheesy pizza sits heating in the oven, or his 500gram steak sizzles on the stove with garlic bread on the side with a family block of chocolate set aside for before bed, tucked into his pillow case.

When I finally saw my husband today, after an entire month of estrangement and deprivation on my part, he laughingly joked, “Don’t look at my big gut, Pinky. I might have put on a kilo.”

I replied politely, “What gut, silly? You don’t look any different to me sweetheart.”

Then he replied with the most soul destroying words I’ve ever heard.

“Neither do you, sweetie!”

FUDGE THE FUDGING UNIVERSE!

(Sorry for swearing.)

What the hell? Are you like me and are just starting to think, I'm just going to let it all go to hell in a hand basket?

Friday, November 20, 2015

If you were born in the sixties or seventies, you’d remember when local television shows broadcasted afternoon shows where they’d invite the local, feral children to appear on the telly with a glamorous hostess and the mandatory clown and do pretty boring things in the name of entertainment.

Our local television station (situated on top of a mountain) had one such show and somehow when I was seven years old and my sister, Sam, was four, my parents managed to get us on to the show.

I remember I was a ball of excitement all the way up the mountain that day. I was about to meet Sam the Clown and Rosemary, the famous and glamorous hostess.

The journey back down the mountain after the show was a different story.

Nobody spoke. So deeply ashamed of my attention-seeking performance, my mother sat with her teeth clenched in humiliation, not able to acknowledge her eldest daughter after her abominable display of exhibitionism.

That’s how I remember it anyway.

We were given goody bags with coke bottles and chips and stuff, but they tasted bitter with my mother’s eyes boring resentfully into my forehead as I tentatively consumed them when we arrived back home.

“You were a disgrace, Pinky!” I remember her saying. “Why did you have to be such a loud mouth, show off?”

The next day, as we were lining up outside my grade two classroom, one of my young peers commented, “I saw you on the telly last night. My mum said you looked like a cheeky brat.”

My teacher, Miss Callaghan (a pious bitch who had a brown perm and a dour expression) nodded in agreement.

The jury was out. I’d been a tarnish on the honour of all seven year olds in the city and brought shame on my family and the population of the town.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Scotto and I have a standard thing where, if we have a sudden pain or sharp twinge, we just say to each other, “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just a nerve”.

For example, my thumb will start to randomly twitch.

“Parkinsons!” I’ll gasp, my face white with fear.

And Scotto will say: “It’s probably just a nerve. Either that or you drank too much last night. You’ll be right.”

One side of my face will go numb and I can only talk from the left side of my mouth whilst dribbling profusely: “Stroke!” I’ll slur.

“It’s a nerve.” Scotto will scoff. “Don’t be a sook. Here, have a wine.”

My left leg falls off and I go blind in one eye: “It’s only a nerve,” he’ll admonish. "You’ll be better tomorrow. Come on hop-a-long. Let’s go to the pub."

All joking aside, I’m sort of known as Dr. Poinker at work.

When I say ‘sort of’ I mean I’m not.

But I should be because I know lots of stuff most non-medical people don’t on account of being a hypochondriac. I can diagnose everyone’s maladies from pernicious anaemia to a carbuncle on the ankle. GPs hate my guts.

It started way before the Internet too. I had a medical encyclopaedia I read as fastidiously as one might read a copy of An Idiot’s Guide to Writing Inane Blog Posts.

So I was excited last night when I did one of those Facebook quizzes that tested medical knowledge. Twelve questions it promised, but it lied. There were fifty questions. FIFTY! But once I got started I couldn’t stop and I knew from my maniacal tallying, I got 46 out of 50 correct and I wanted to skite about it on Facebook.

But when I went to get my results I had to submit my email address and I thought, ‘Get fudged! I don’t want to be spammed with your stupid emails.’

So then I tried to leave a nasty comment on the link but it put me in a never ending loop and I was left frustrated and probably hacked by Russian bots during the process.

NB: Not to pick on the Russians. It might have been anyone really but I doubt anyone reads my blog in Russia so they’re fair game.

If you do happen to be Russian and you read this blog, I must add that I really loved Olga Korbut, that gymnast in the 70s but I do wonder why you sent that poor little mongrel dog into space in 1957 and left it to endlessly orbit the galaxy. Not that I hold a grudge about it because I do love Tchaikovsky and Vodka.

R.I.P. Laika.

If my dogs were sent into space I reckon I’d still be able to hear them barking as they orbited Earth in the space machine. The greenhouse gasses would be exponentially enhanced by the permeating cloud of citrus spray from their barking collars. I’m sure a few local animal management officers would be more than glad to see them on a direct trajectory to Mars, not to mention the neighbours.

They’d have to cut off their oxygen supply in the end, I suppose.

Just like I’m about to do to my German Shepherd if he doesn’t shut the hell up.

Sorry to be harping on about my barking dogs but it’s driving me loony. Anything driving you loony lately?

Monday, November 16, 2015

I was watering the lawn at dusk the other day and I noticed a large, brown, gleaming, elongated lump on my precious buffalo grass. Outraged, and assuming it was the calling card of an early morning walker’s dog, which’d furtively pooped on my grass while I was still snoring, I swore loudly and aimed a sharp jet of water on it. I expected it to break apart and dissolve but it didn’t.

It remained solid but a weird cloud of red dust sprayed up and out of it.

I gave it another shot with the hose and it happened again. I was a bit afraid of it by now and tiptoed closer. I suspected it might be an extra-terrestrial egg or something and a ten legged squid-like creature was going to burst out and attach itself to my throat or invade one of my orifices only to lay more eggs inside me and emerge from my nose at an inopportune moment. Each time I squirted it, more red dust would mist up in the air.

I was on the phone to my father at the time and he didn’t offer any helpful suggestions. In fact, I think he assumed I was just being silly and it really was dog poop.

The next morning when I was on my way to work I checked it out and by that time, it was surrounded by huge, white mushrooms. By the afternoon all the mushrooms had transformed into the dog turd, brown things and I couldn’t water the lawn because they were all spraying red spores everywhere.

I don’t like mushrooms. I like the white ones you buy in Coles fried up with butter, but I can’t stand the ones that grow in the garden because I’m afraid I’ll accidentally eat one. (It’s the same as how I don’t like heights because I always think I might accidentally jump off the cliff or the fifty storey balcony or something.)

Plus I think fungi is ugly (See photo above).

Even when I buy the mushrooms from Coles I’m always wondering if an East Asian Death Cap or a False Champignon managed to sneak past the quality controllers. I still eat them but I always monitor myself for symptoms for a few hours afterwards.

Ian, the mower man, came and murdered all the fungi with his Victa Mustang, thank God.

I don’t know why they were there in the first place. It’s not like we’ve had any rain. Maybe I’m spending too much time watering the garden.

I suppose this type of post is why nobody seems to be reading my blog anymore.

“And what did you do on the weekend, Calpurnia?” I ask a little girl in the front row who’s stabbing holes in her rubber with a pencil. I can see she’s cut her own fringe again, this time it’s so short I suspect she took to it with a razor.

“I went killing crocodiles with Dad,” she says in a matter of fact tone. “There’s a big croc on the banks of the creek near our house. It ate a man last week, so Dad said we had to kill it.”

‘Funny,’ I think. ‘I haven’t seen any reports of a man being eaten by a crocodile in this vicinity lately.’

“That’s true, Calpurnia,” I say, whilst frowning at Malvolio for his rude interuption and thinking about how I should book in for a Botox injection between my eyebrows before Christmas and wondering if the clinic has any ‘teacher specials’ available for the holiday season.

“And what did you get up to this weekend, Malvolio?” I enquire, knowing full well what his answer will be.

“I went on Mortal Kombat all weekend!” he exclaims. “I killed six thousand monsters and maimed thirty thousand soldiers. My name is KillDeathBlood 1973 and I’m a legend!”

Now that I can believe.

What tall stories did your kids tell at school?Linking up with Grace at With Some Grace for #FYBF

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

My dogs have been particularly naughty since Scotto went away. I think they’re feeling extra protective of me because they seem to be barking at everything that moves. Either that or they’ve realised the true master of the house has absconded from the nut house and now the inmates are free to run wild.

I was compelled to go and buy yet another citronella barking collar (for the Chihuahua this time). I felt a rush of excitement and anticipation when I was buying it at the pet shop and couldn’t help giggling when I told the girl behind the counter, “This is going to give that little bastard a shock. I’ll show that Mexican son of a biartch.”

“Would you like to buy some calming vitamins for him?” she asked.

“Sure!” I replied, riding high on the euphoric thought that I’d solved my problem. “Anything’s worth a try.”

It was with great disappointment when I later watched Pablo enjoying a raucous and unnecessarily lengthy, barking binge, the citronella spray almost obscuring his small, muscular body, but the said spray having absolutely no effect on the tenacity of his riotous efforts.

Adding to my consternation, all the ‘calming’ vitamins managed to do was make the Chihuahua and the German Shepherd sick up. It was quite horrible.

I put a sheet up on the fence to stop the German Shepherd from seeing movement outside (a leaf blowing in the wind can trigger his incessant woofing) and I barricaded all the windows to prevent the Chihuahua from seeing the German Shepherd.

Unfortunately it appears that dogs have a good sense of hearing and can’t really see that well anyway.

Does anyone know if they make ear plugs for dogs?

In desperation I searched the Internet for a miracle solution… or just some doggy earplugs really.

I found a video which demonstrated a method of doggy ear massage and a five hour music video especially designed to calm dogs down. What kind of nit wit put that on the World Wide Web? What kind of nit wit would play it to their dog?

Anyway, the Chihuahua hated the ear massage and the music almost sent me mental and elicited no visible response from the dogs.

Apparently you should never yell at your dog for barking because they think you’re barking along with them. So all the time I’ve been screaming, “Shut the fudge up you fudging stupid animals!” They think I’ve been yelling out, “Get off the stinking lawn you mongrel Labrador, how dare you walk past my house! I want to bite you with my teeth!”

Another website advised to calmly call the dog over when it’s barking, make it sit quietly and give it a treat. (I’ve been using this technique as I’m writing my post and so far the Chihuahua has had thirty-eight treats. I don’t think he gets it.)

So… back to the ear plugs. You won’t believe it but you can actually buyMutt Muffs from the United States! According to the website they have ‘ inner sound-deadening foam with the same density found in pilots' high-end headsets’.

P.S. I just found out why the dogs have been barking for the last half hour non stop. Someone had been knocking on the door attempting to deliver some flowers Scotto had ordered for me in the top photo. Lol.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

I’ve had a large, local reaction. No, I haven’t been running laps on my front lawn in my undies and titillating the neighbours.

I’ve had a large, local reaction to the wasp that decided it didn’t like the cut of my jib on Thursday. There’s a big, red, hot lump on my elbow.

Celine the fox terrier came over and sniffed it a moment ago and whined something that sounded a lot like the word, ‘aaaampuuuutaaaaate’.

Dogs know these things. They can sniff out cancerous tumours and everything.

"Don't say I didn't warn you!"

It’s okay though, it’s my left arm. How much do you think an arm weighs? (I was just thinking it’d be a very quick way to lose a couple of kilos.)

Despite the vicious wasp assault, I’ve maintained my 5am starts and walks but decided to err on the side of caution and walk along the street instead of the foliage-lined river path. It’s not as picturesque but I don’t have to be as vigilant about looking out for snakes and spiteful wasps.

I showed my elbow to Scotto on Skype but the redness didn’t show up enough on the washed out screen to elicit much sympathy.

Agreeing to communicate with Scotto via Skype was not something that came easily to me. The thought of chatting to him on the telephone in sexy, appealing, dulcet tones, but with no makeup on, greasy skin, unwashed/combed hair and wearing a stained, ripped t-shirt whilst picking my nose or flicking through a magazine, seemed like the ideal long distance relationship mode of communication to me.

What you can’t see can’t hurt you and all that. But I missed seeing his big, boofy head and finally acquiesced to a face to face.

I suppose I’ve let myself ‘go’ a bit over the last ten years (since getting married) and in this past ten days, sans husband, my physical appearance has deteriorated exponentially. I’ve enjoyed lolling around in baggy shorts and going braless in tent-like t-shirts on the weekends.

My friend and real estate agent, Nettie, and I went for a coffee and a walk around the shops yesterday after the open house. She was dressed in a neat little pencil skirt, a white silk blouse and heels and I looked like a recently electrocuted homeless person who’d just crawled out of her sleeping bag.

I picked a dress off the rack in one of the boutiques.

“This is nice,” I said hopefully, feeling around for the price tag.

“It’s a sack, Pinky!” Nettie scoffed. “It has no waist. Besides I hate those high necklines.”

“But this style hides a big belly and the neckline protects your upper chest from the sun,” I stammered.

“Bugger the sun,” Nettie pooh-poohed me. “I think a bit of décolletage needs to be on show.”

I looked down at the floor in shame and spied her perfectly groomed, pink toenails under the sparkling straps of her pretty sandals, then glanced across to the gnarled bunion poking out the side of my rubber thong.

My toenails were so long they could Julienne a carrot and they were a dull grey colour with one black, crusty pinky-toe.

Nettie is an eligible single lady, you see. She still makes an effort. Women who get pedicures take care of themselves, unlike dirty-toed, old cows like me.

Sigh. I want a pedicure now but I think my bunion precludes me from even entering one of those nail salons. The young girls would shriek, ‘Pariah!’ and push me out the door. If they happened to notice the carbuncle wasp bite on my elbow they’d call the health authorities for sure.

Anyway, Scotto can’t see my feet on Skype.

I’ve decided what I’ll do next time I Skype Scotto, is smear Vaseline all over the camera lens on my laptop (I was about to smear it all over the screen but then I realised it wouldn’t work).

I’ll turn the lights off and wear a hat to cover my unwashed hair. That should create a dewy, mysterious look.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Last night, it suddenly occurred to me I should set the alarm for 5am and go for an early walk the following day.

It was the very first pebble in an horrific landslide of biblical proportions when the alarm went off this morning.

I’d organised everything I’d need the night before; keys, phone and runners with socks tucked in and neatly placed on the stairs. All I had to do was scull a coffee.

On my way down the driveway, I fed the whining cat and picked the newspaper up from the lawn before setting forth on my journey.

About halfway through my walk, I reached into my pocket for my phone to check the time… no phone… but it didn’t worry me because I assumed I’d merely left it at home.

It didn’t worry me anywhere near as much as the fudging swarm of wasps I walked into. I should have known when the elderly gentleman walking about twenty yards ahead of me began flailing his arms around demonically and performing wobbly pirouettes... but I just thought he was being silly or doing some Eastern meditation thing.

One of the little fudgers stung me on the elbow and I spent the rest of the walk waiting for an anaphylactic attack to strike.

I looked for my phone just before I was ready to leave for work but horror of horrors, it was nowhere to be seen. I ran out on to the front lawn and scoured the area where I’d bent over to feed the cat and pick up the newspaper, thinking it might have fallen out of my pocket. God forbid it should have absconded on my walk!

In a panic I sent a FB message to Shazzy and Kazzy to ring me urgently so I could find it via my earholes.

Kyles sent Scotto (on the Gold Coast), a text asking him to block the phone for me. God forbid some grubby fingered person should run up a massive bill on my (unlocked) phone.

He was straight on it.

Turns out my provider is Virgin. Who knew?

It’s funny how when you lose something you suddenly realise how deeply attached to it you are. At morning tea, I watched everyone brandishing their phones around with gay abandon. Tears welled up in my eyes and sad music played in my head. ‘Treasure what you have guys’, I thought, ‘because you never know when it will be cruelly taken from you’.

Anyway, I found the stupid thing when I arrived home, tucked in the bowels of the couch where my flabby bottom had sat while I drank my coffee and the phone had slipped out of my back pocket…

There. That’s why it was an anus horribilus not an annus horribilus.

But then the worst of the day was yet to come. I had to administer Celine, the fox terrier’s bi-weekly menopause tablet. It’s usually Scotto’s job but he ain’t here no more. It took me five (toothy-bitey) attempts to realise I needed to put it in a lump of butter or she was either going to bite my finger off or begin to levitate and spew pea green bile all over me whilst screaming profanities.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

I went to my sister’s place for a tiny, Halloween drink last night (how much does my sister look like me when wearing a black wig and dressed as a witch, eh?).

I ran into my good friend Sinead there and I asked her (her being a food and beverage manager and all) why all of a sudden, bottles of wine don’t have that disappointing hollow in the bottom anymore.

It’s a punt.

That’s what it’s actually called… it’s not just a silly euphemism I made up.

The punt is quite disappointing in the respect that you think you still have a full glass of wine left in the bottle, when in reality you only have a dribble.

Only serious wine drinkers will appreciate this.

Anyway, Sinead told me that it was there because it was so that waiters could stick their thumbs into the bottom of the bottle so they can pour it without interfering with the temperature of the sacred liquid and also so that Portensio Pretentious can sniff the wine to check it’s ‘not of rotten corkage’.

But since corks have gone by the wayside, the whole business of hollow bottomed wine bottles has become passé.

Then, Sinead performed a fantastic (bitter and twisted hospitality-worker-type) impersonation of bogan wine drinkers swirling the $10 bottle of house wine they’ve ordered, pretending they know all about wine.

She also told me a story about how a very elderly geezer, came into her restaurant accompanied by a deliciously youthful and attractive (but scatter-brained) ingénue.

When Sinead explained to the odd couple that the restaurant was not charging corkage now because, ‘No wine bottles have corks anymore’, the pretty damsel piped up with, “Well, that’s no good! They should charge a screwing fee!”

Sinead said it was all she could do to avoid meaningful eye contact with the old geezer.

The point of this, is that Sinead was feeding me a bunch of codswallop, as usual. The hollow in the bottom of the bottle is there to give the architecture of the glass bottle strength and prevent a build-up of pressure. It’s also there to disperse the sediment, and hinder it from rising up when poured.

Only cheap wine lacks a punt. Like… the stuff I buy.

My other point is this. Don’t ever take what people tell you as being the truth (especially those in the hospitality industry). People make up facts 72% of the time. If you want the real truth go to Yahoo answers and your mind will be blown apart.

My other, other point is this… don’t be a pretentious dick in front of anyone in the hospitality industry because they will be going back and dining off stories about you for years to come.

Question? Do you look like your sibling? Feel free to put photos in the comments.

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